Deposition of Magnesium

Magnesium is a relatively volatile metal and we have never deposited it here at Nanolab. Because of its high vapor pressure it is not well suited for deposition in multi-user systems as it will easily re-evaporate from the chamber surfaces and contaminate the films of subsequent users. We are also concerned about deposition of Mg in a chamber with a cryo pump as a very volatile metal may clog the pump.

If you wish to deposit magnesium, please explore options with collaborators at other institutions.

Below is a summary of information compiled Spring 2020 when we considered depositing Mg at Nanolab.

Mg advice spring 2020

Input collected by Rebecca (reet)

None of the groups we wrote to have mentioned that they have experience with using the chamber for something else after using it for Mg.
At Penn State they used a cryo pump with Mg e-beam evaporation for many experiments (at least 2 students and several papers) apparently without issues with the pump.

More detailed info may be found in LabIntra (requires login).